Thursday, May 8, 2014

Is it just me or has the IHC* gone just totally off even its own loosely secured rails lately? Between the summits by "functional medicine" practitioners to tell you everything your doctor is hiding from you (a silence bought and paid for by Big Pharma and apparently the only thing they learn in medical school) and this resistant starch vs. keto war waging out there ... it is truly nuts. I simply don't have time to cover it all between "real life" and projects in the works.

But ...

Have you heard? Good old Fat Head is eating more carbs these days, including resistant starch supplementation, and following the lead of an unlikely diet/health guru in one former astrophysicist named Paul Jaminet, author (with his wife Shou Ching in name only it would appear) of Perfect Health Diet. It's quite an about face for the former comedian and mocker of starches.

you can click to enlarge

The mixture of cognitive dissonance and need for validation makes for strange bedfellows indeed. But ultimately this is not about FH, rather it ties into something else I've been blogging on quite a bit recently ... this trend of My Special Diet is the same as (or similar enough to draw the inference) XYZ Diet.

On the "Buy Our Book" page, and in various interviews and appearances, Paul claims: "The food is delicious – it resembles gourmet cuisines such as French, Thai, and Chinese." (I blogged on this issue and the Thai diet here)

The book is well sprinkled with paleo diet references and Paul dedicates Chapter 2 to convincing readers PHD is a "paleo diet". PHD runs around 15-20% protein, 20-30% carb and 60+% fat. As you can see, it resembles none of the theoretical nor the clinical paleo diets.

In the end, I suppose it could be best described as a toxiphobic effort at a balanced diet. Paul applies his knowledge of economics (presumably more vast than nutrition, to this day) to nutrition and believes strongly in the concept of declining marginal benefits. Translating that to a health benefits curve he arrived at the diagram below:

There is an optimum quantity of most nutrients, located over the range in the curve where the marginal benefits are close to zero. This range, which we call the peak health range, encompasses doses for which all the benefits of the nutrient are captured, but none of the toxicity. {~ KL 1380, before diagram above}

Here are the PHR's and recommendations in PHD and I'll use my own acronyms of LDB (lower deficiency bound) and UTB (upper toxicity bound) to indicate the ranges of each.

Perfect Health Diet Peak Health Ranges

Protein:

LDB = 50g/day or roughly 10%
UTB = 600 calories/day (150g)

The peak health range for protein is, in healthy adults with good digestion eating sufficient carbs, fairly broad: about 200 to 600 calories per day, or 10 to 30 percent of energy. As a rule, 15 percent of energy as protein is close to optimal for any adult eating sufficient carbs. {KL 1493-6}

Carbohydrates:

Interestingly in all of Chapter 10, I could not find a definitive LDB or UTB. Although Paul is somewhat famous for talking about glucose deficiency he does not define some minimum to avoid it in the book. Perhaps with the Kitavan in the back of his mind, he was wary of defining a UTB either. Instead he puts forth the graph below and posits a narrow range of

This is of course based on fasting glucose production rates, and based on the above curve necessarily presumes "glucose disposal" is a bad thing? In any case, basically:

600 calories = 150 grams

Fructose is singled out at a UTB of 25g per day. (oh and check out Lustig on YouTube!)

Also, there's a section entitled Glucose as a Killing Agent. SIGH! And, interestingly, instead of addressing glucose as a dietary nutrient, a good chunk of the chapter is devoted to "glucose excursions" which are not caused by the carbs per se or else we'd all be hyperglycemic ... right? This includes food combining strategies and glycemic index, etc. in terms of food choices rather than addressing any sort of peak health range.

Fats:

PUFA: "The Dangerous Fats"

LDB = perhaps 1-2% for O6,
UTB = 4% O6 is the threshold for health impairment, and it gets worse over 6%
Although there is a section on O3 toxicity, I didn't see a value

SaFA and MUFA: "The Safe Fats" (remind me how this is "paleo" again?)

The macronutrients we’ve considered so far all become toxic above a threshold: protein above 600 calories per day ; carbs (if there is any impairment of disposal pathways) above 600 calories per day plus up to 500 calories per hour of athletic training; PUFA above 100 calories per day. {KL: 2702-6}

We’ve considered every macronutrient except SaFA and MUFA— and we have only about 1,300 calories per day before toxicity effects begin.

That these are taken together as a single "class" of fats is absurd on its face. The scientific literature is full of comparisons of MUFA versus SaFA, and not only that but metabolically these behave very differently in the human body. For shame!

LDB = ??
UTB = None

SaFA and MUFA are nontoxic; they are beneficial, for that matter, even when eaten in very large amounts. {KL 2708}

The above sentiment is repeated several times in the chapter. Whatever happened to the curve? Paul defines no "peak health range" for these, they are simply to make up the rest of the diet.

The LoBAG Diet ... Remember?

OK ... sorry ... but I had to lay the groundwork here. You see, as I mentioned in the opening, there's a bit of a bromance brewing between Fat Head and Paul and Paul did a Q&A for Fat Head readers. The response to this question is fascinating (and not in a good way):

Vlc eater: “Do you recommend PHD for diabetics and prediabetics? If VLC eliminates fasting glucose issues and leads to better glocose levels overall, do you see a problem? Also, is it possible that the self-reported mood issues reported here are a manifestation of mild carb addiction?”

Paul: ... The basic biology here is that the body’s physiology is optimized for a carbohydrate intake of around 30%.

For someone consuming 2000 calories a day. In PHD the case was not so much about percentage of intake but total calories and grams.

Paul: ... In diabetes, the body does not dispose of excess carbohydrate properly, so carb intakes above about 30% are harmful. However, al carb intakes of 30% or lower are handled quite well in terms of blood glucose levels. This has been demonstrated in many studies. I like the LoBAG (Low Bio-Available Glucose) diet studies of Mary Gannon and Frank Nuttall, which are quite close to PHD. They tested both 20% carb and 30% carb diets in diabetics, and both carb levels were handled quite well.

I altered the links to the full text studies. Ummm ... NO PAUL, THEY ARE NOT.

Long time inmates here at the Asylum might recall that the LoBAG diets were some of the very first I blogged on. First in general HERE, and specific to diabetes and the range of diets (20,30 and 40% carb) HERE. I'm not sure how I even missed it, but these were older, heavier men and their intake was around 2800 calories (in the 20% study, 2825 on average) . There's a table right there in the 20% paper showing the macro breakdown for the control diet and the LoBAG-20 diet. So I put those quickly into a spread sheet and added a column for the PHD using 15% protein, a maximum of 150 g carb, and limited PUFA at 4%. I generously split the MUFA/SaFA 50/50. There's a slight discrepency with fat grams not adding up to total in the LoBAG study diets but it's minor. Here are the diet comparisons:

If we upped protein towards toxicity limits, PHD would be at 20% protein and keeping PUFA below alert levels (somehow) we'd still be at 85 grams each for MUFA and SaFA. Yeah ... that's REALLY similar to LoBAG, what with it's near-ammonia toxicity (and longevity robbing) levels of protein and saturated fats at 10% of intake.

Perhaps Paul should have looked more closely at the diet in the study, although I have come to realize he picks out only that which appears to resemble the PHD and ignore the rest. LoBAG increased PUFA intake by almost 50% in absolute quantities, 3% increment in total energy. Pegging SaFA at 10% is no small matter when PHD comes out at 30% SaFA. The researchers likely wanted to at least control for saturated fat in their study -- as "high fat" intake studies often do -- which should have at least prompted Paul to wonder why. The comparison would only get worse for the LoBAG-30 where protein and carb would exceed 200 grams each and top the 600 calorie mark both. Then there's the IGF-1 and longevity stuff ....

click to view

EDIT 5/9: I hadn't read the entire Q&A when I wrote this post. Later in that post, Paul responds to a question definitively that PHD is:

15% Protein , 30% Carb , 55% Fat

Sorry, but this "definition" would make PHD even further from LoBag-20 (which is the study the curves he used came from) or you might as well state that PHD is like just about any diet used in any study where fat is over, say, 45% ... "close enough" ?? Or carb is 30% or less (but not keto) .... "close enough"?? Or protein is 15-30% ... "close enough"????

Heck, it's close enough to what he says the Paleo diet is, the cannibal diet (what our bodies "eat" while fasting) and breast milk. It's all right there in the book! {KL 744} Or how about other mammals like gorillas? {KL 836}

The PHD macro ratios seem to be shifting ....

"Wild mammals, no matter what foods enter their mouths, provide their bodies with very similar macronutrients: • 0 to 16 percent carbohydrates • 15 to 25 percent protein • 56 to 77 percent saturated and monounsaturated fats • 1 to 11 percent polyunsaturated fats. An equivalent diet for humans would have more carbs (to feed our larger brains) and less protein and fat.

Yes, they reduced the carb intake to one-third of original levels, that the glucose spikes went down is uneventful in this context. The lowering of the fasting blood glucose is NOT dependent on dietary carbohydrate intake, and the researchers attribute this to stimulation of IGF-1 when carb was increased to 30%. These men were not well in the study, and although described as mild diabetics, had HbA1c, FBG and OGTT results indicative of rather severe diabetes. It is impressive that they could get the type of improvement that they did. The following questions remain:

Would the same have happened if fat were merely increased proportionally to roughly 50 grams each (and ~17% SaFA total energy)?

What impact did the MUFA have? It wasn't addressed at all.

What would the long term effect be?

Would this have been even more profound if calorie restriction and weigh loss were involved?

In light of recent trends of cutting protein for diabetics favored by the ketotic, I'm glad that once again Paul has highlighted these diets, even if he misrepresented them, or rather misconstrued them to be PHD-like.

To Summarize:

PHD not like the French, Thai, Hawaiian, Mediterranean or Paleo Diet(s).

The Perfect Health Diet -- Unlike any other diet ever consumed by man!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I still believe that most of the basics of the content of the diet are sound. This is where there's a real disconnect (for me at least) between his blogging circa 2010-11, the book (maybe its having it all in one place that makes the inconsistencies and absurdities jump out at you), and public presentations since the late 2012 release of the current version.

Real, whole foods, some "real" carbohydrate, and protein sufficient. You can't really argue too much with that. At my calorie levels, and eating a bit higher on the protein side of things, PHD worked out more isocaloric than anything for me. But this notion that calories above these basal levels should be comprised of fat is not an idea that Paul puts forth any convincing data to support.

Even if saturated fats aren't harmful, it is difficult to take a diet philosopy seriously that (a) is based on treating SaFA and MUFA interchangeably, and (b) presumes everything is toxic at relatively low levels BUT these two nutrients. Not in the face of billions of healthy humans consuming far greater quantities of protein and especially carbohydrate for thousands of years.

If you take 90% of Paul's recommendations out of context, and don't look too closely at what the studies actually say or show (vs. what the blogger he snagged the research from interpreted the study to show, or the abstract seemed to imply) the PHD seems sound. Also if you don't do the combined math on all of his recommendations. In this case, the old "devil is in the details" cliche really holds true.

*IHC = Incestral Health Community ... a play on words describing the wider LC/paleo/primal/WAPF/alt.med./ancestral/whatever community and it's many and several interlinked and co-dependent factions.

40 comments:

dancer80
said...

It is Jaminet's insistence that SaFA is nontoxic and can be eaten in unlimited quantities that eventually will mark the downfall of PHD. Also protein upwards of 150 grams a day, PUFA scaremongering means that red meat such as fatty cuts of beef is healthier than chicken, recommending that we should eat one pound of meat/ fish a day, eating grains, beans and legumes will kill you basically, and this obsession with fungal infections or parasitic infections as root of ill health. Now I hear they are holding wellness vacation-seminars....weird that these things eventually turn into money-making ventures.

PHD is a culmination of Paul's diet adventures. He first tried VLCing. Suffered severe side effects. Felt that persistent infections and micronutrient deficiencies are behind disease states. That's why he started focusing on "food toxins," which parallels Paleo's obession with "Neolithic agents of disease." The problem is he swallowed the Paleo propaganda too much on legumes and grains.

Plus he uses way too many supplements. Thinks copper deficiency is behind hyper cholesterol. 1 in 4 experience reactive hyper cholesterol upon eating too much SAFA. Do they all suffer from copper deficiency? It's part genetics, perhaps some with low T3 but the rate is 1 in 4. These people have to decrease SAFA.

His diet is sound but the carbohydrate "sweet spot" theory doesn't jibe with carb-heavy cultures; it only works when the only carbs you're eating is are processed and "food reward" carbs. He is to be credited for coming up with "glucose deficiency" and the conection he made between glucose and mucosal immunity. Most of Paleo is still clueless on this but this is widely known in starvation literature: starvation = your mucous membranes dry out = infections and breaches of intestinal integrity.

He should embrace legumes, some other grains, and admit the atherogenic potential of SAFA in a significant portion of the population. Also, he should not be so invertebrate. He should speak up forcefully and not paint his diet when surrounded by people like Terri Wahls and David Perlmutter. His diet does not have much in common with those two nitwits'. There is some commonality in terms of avoiding food toxins (gluten-free) but this is the same guy who developed scurvy and diverticulosis from VLCing, endorsing those who believe carbs to be a non-essential macronutrient?

I should have paid attention more closely years ago. Mostly I tuned out the infection stuff b/c it did not interest me.

Also interesting is that the food pictures posted to his FB wall seem overwhelmingly to be seafood soups and such. Very few look fatty either. He also does eat chicken and adds more fat in the form of egg yolks to chicken soup. According to nutritiondata.com, egg yolk fats are 16% PUFA .

Shou-Ching is only there to lend the relevent PhD (Molecular Bio) to the PHD. It's a real problem that nobody dare question. One could "forgive" more time on his part to interviews and the like since she has a real job, but that does not excuse why she does NO interviews and why it's not her who is giving presentations at AHS, etc.

Poor Tom. I don't know what's up but I noticed the sudden addition of the resistant starch religion to his repertoire. So his diet and health were very good to perfect before but he had to change it up? Hmmmmmm.......sounds like the hazy thought process of a deteriorating low career to me but I don't know Tom at all. As a very puzzling aside to that, he as a video of Jaminet jogging including the action cue from what I presume is Jaminet's wife. WTH? Truly pointless and comical.

My hypothesis is that many of these blogger-authors on nutrition actually have disordered eating habits and perfectionism traits which cause very biased interpretations of research. I used to have this problem too. There's just too much stupidity in trying to plan out the perfect diet and epigenetic changes from adapting to different diets causing there to be no perfect diet ever but I don't have evidence to show that. It is certain that the PHD diet was never consumed by any human, especially the high amt of saturated fat: how the **** did paleolithic humans get 92.3% of fats in their diet to be mono/saturated?

As to Tom, I have a lower than low opinion of the man himself due to our "personal" interactions. But you're right. He and Fred Hahn both, and Carpender (dunno if she's tried this, but she tried CarbNite backloading nonsense) and likely many others ... why the need to try something else if your health is good and you're convinced it's healthy?

My guess is that like SO many others, the FBG kept creeping up and the lipid profile went from acceptably "high normal" to over the "what if there is something to this" zone. That's when they do a "bio hack" and share their miraculous results as a preemptive strike against criticism. *I'm STILL low carb* *I still believe!!!!* (my income depends on you still believing that).

THere haven't been any new videos from his children (thankfully ... don't bring the kids in on this please, I feel the same way about BOTH sides of the abortion issue when you have toddlers in strollers holding pictures of bloody women in allies or aborted fetuses. I just hope the metabolic rate robbing years of ketosis (not to mention carbophobic indoctrination) haven't set those girls up for ED and obesity. I fear they have :(

Yes, that trait seems to draw folks to the genre. So many current strict paleos were vegan beforehand.

Yes **** Even if the Eaton/Konner/Cordain version of paleo is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off base, the hunter gatherer tribes and traditional diets of most of these "prized" cultures are almost invariably high in unsats (including PUFA) and low in SF. Even the highest in fat paleo trial kept SF around 10%.

I love Tom's kids and I think his wife is terrific. I don't know your history with Tom so no comment on that either way. I still don't get the video. The guy runs 100 feet @ 4 mph? OK. I remember Tom posting a while ago about having a few beers and some other Carby stuff at a wedding or something in trying to explain his cholesterol levels being higher than they had previously been. He wasn't worried but wondered what happened and was getting ready to be reprimanded by his new doc in TN or something like that. Why do these guys measure things they don't care or worry about? That's a bigger question than it might first appear no? "Yes....the water is rising in the boat but I'm not worried...it's unsinkable!" "How do you know the water's rising" Oh....I just check it." "Why?" OK lame exchange but you get what I mean.

Don't get me wrong, I think his kids are great. I don't know his wife, she seems cool but that's irrelevant. What I object to is Tom having his kids make videos holding up a college textbook on Metabolic Regulation and regurgitating Daddy's warped nutrition misinformation.

Actually Jaminet does believe in restricting protein. If you want to listen to guys who really do not want to restrict protein, listen to Bernstein. He believes you can avoid ketosis with unlimited protein consumption (whey protein) at around 30 g carbs. In his book, he brags about his low Cr which translates to GFR ~95 for someone his age. But he never discloses his BUN, which would be over the reference range if he's eating that much protein. That would also probably explain what I suspect is the cancer that he's had and has been trying to cover up.

If I left the impression I personally know Tom and his family I didn't mean to as I most definitely don't. I should have said the certainly seem nice. I've seen that video and I remember thinking it was lame at the time for many reasons. I got the impression Tom was trying his hand at creating a Youtube sensation and I don't like that. I rarely like watching kids on TV shows or commercials whenever the "creators" of the piece try to make the kids appear as smart or smarter than the adults. They're not....ever. The watching JM interact with them really disturbed me and I can't exactly put my finger on why that is. Of course, I remember seeing video of JM and his wife what's her name when they used to review fast food items or something stupid like that. Nothing like watching JM chewing away on my tv. Disgusting. As far as his humor attempts, he Is one of the least funny people I have ever seen and I truly mean that. I just viscerally react to the guy and as unfair as that may be, there it is. Tom though is a conundrum. I really don't know what he thinks of his own advice and lifestyle. Sometimes when we don't know what to do....we do something until we get a BETTER idea then switch while justifying both! We can be nutty us humans.

I actually listened to the kids' interview and felt bad that he was dragging his own kids into this. I'm sure they rehearsed. He seems like a great dad but seriously, what did he force them to say. Do you really think his kids do not like Twinkies, Doritos, and ice cream?

Actually, there are so many problems with the basics of the content of the diet. Copious amounts of meat, which is not just a health concern, but an ecological and ethical one. Fat as the basis of the diet, when there's so much evidence linking high-fat diets to insulin resistance and obesity as you know already. Unjustified scaremongering about fruits, nuts, whole grains, and beans. Buttloads of supplements and oils, which are by definition NOT "whole foods." Advocacy of bone broths, which carry the risk of lead poisoning. I don't know how you could say the diet is "protein sufficient." You mean to tell me that the average person needs a half pound to pound of meat everyday or they're not getting enough protein? SOME real carbohydrates, you say? Why should it be only "some" when every healthy long-lived population of people has BASED their diet around said carbohydrates?

Welcome Alan, You seem to have taken that last paragraph to mean that it discounted all that went before. I didn't mean it to be. Perhaps it needs a rephrase. I think it has enough carb to prevent the serious issues many encounter following LC diets. It doesn't have to be meat heavy and favors lower rather than higher protein anyway. I see most of your points ... I was making a broader statement. The "protein sufficient" was more of an "as opposed to the keto trends of limiting protein or vegans who promote broccoli as a good source of protein" reference.

As to scaremongering -- I'm TOTALLY on board with you there, I blog on this stuff quite a bit and can only fit so much into each post without repeating myself as well. In an ideal world as I typed the hyperlinks to other posts would magically be incorporated into my words :-)

Supplements? I'm with you there as well. But that is a separate issue from the diet per se. Then again, if your diet is perfect, you shouldn't need supplements. Right? That is an issue with virtually ALL of these healthy diets.

I would like to see every one of these high fat or high protein VLC gurus make public their lab tests. But they won't because most likely they either have out of whack metabolic panels such as BUN as you mentioned, or bad lipid profiles even as they claim cholesterol is not important.

In Jaminet's 2010 edition of PHD which I still have, he mentions only eating meat that is fatty, specifically 60-70% fat, because fatty meat has more micronutrients. But then he says you can overcome lean meats' less than optimal micronutrients by eating lean meats with other fats like butter and coconut oil. By taking him at face value, a piece of chicken breast can be transformed into optimal protein with micronutrients simply by slathering it in butter.

He also claims legumes are extremely dangerous though he does say the mechanisms of how/ why legumes are dangerous isn't understood. He cites a handful of studies using rats, and claims toxicity linked to undercooked and raw legumes as general indictment against legumes consumption. Jaminet loves white rice and resistant starches in sweet potatoes, cooked of course. But when it comes to the hated legumes he cites studies using raw legumes or undercooked legumes. His take on Paleolithic diet is the same VLC/ meat- heavy falsehood masquerading as anthropological evidence being peddled by paleo community.

resistant starch & the gut biome community remind me SO MUCH of the late 80s & early 90s "nothing can be wrong with these ideas"

All these people who lived through the documentaries of life extenders downing mega vitamins and synthetic antioxidants - CAN't YOU SEE the SAME THING happening again?

yeah these things may be magical, the time to claim magicality is after good quality, replicated human research; just because fecal tranplants work for some cases of C. Dificile does NOT mean YOU need one.

I don't mean to be rude, but it seems that you might be doing some scaremongering of your own. Unfortunately, the study that raised the concern about lead in bone broth didn't mention that the EPA won't take action until the level of lead in drinking water is 15 ug/L. Neither of the broth samples exceeded 10 ug/L.

Sure, you shouldn't be guzzling the stuff, and I wouldn't feed it to small children, but a liter or two a week probably isn't going to harm anyone. (Jaminet recommends .3 L/day, or 2.1L/week.) If you drink a few liters a day of water that contains 1 ug/L lead (the level found in tap water in the study) you'd save about the same amount lead by installing a carbon filter as avoiding bone broth. The EPA estimates that only 10-20% of lead exposure is from drinking water; lead exposure from air pollution, dust, and paint is probably a much larger health concern.

That said, I have to agree with carbsane's points. As with many nutrition books, Jaminet's book looks great until one starts to look a bit more closely.

You're exactly right. Or they selectively disclose favorable markers like Bernstein. He discloses his trigs, and cholesterol numbers and Creatinine. But no BUN, no WBCs, no immune markers nor hormones. But I already know he has some kind of immune condition he's been suffering from for like the last 15 years. So have many of his patients.

He's not about protein restriction but he puts a pretty low threshold on supposed toxicity. It's been a long time, but I asked him once about that and he's more into the ideal being 100g starch and 100g protein which would put protein at 15% of a 2667 cal diet, add some fruit and you get around 20% carb.

I have seen many among the various shades of low-carb-high-fatters, including paleos, celebrating their "lack of hunger" in their posts in e-forums devoted to diabetes and diet. Some of these posters, especially ladies, proudly declare that they feel always full and wouldn't feel like eating even if they skipped breakfast, lunch, supper and whatever else. Their posts seem to glorify their lack of desire to eat and also imply that hunger is an abnormal and unhealthy state.

Did our ancient ancestors remain hunger free in their paleolithic lives? Didn't hunger play at least a small role in making them go forth out of their tropical cradle in Africa and spread all over the world? :)

I take breakfast, lunch, an afternoon snack and supper. My meals are usually separated by more than 4 hours and practically eat nothing between meals. I get pleasantly hungry by meal times and this hunger adds a lot to the enjoyment of food. I am one who wants to enjoy, and normally do enjoy my food.

Yeah, the perpetual lack of hunger is eerily similar to what happens to some with eating disorders. I understand the need to avoid that gnawing hunger, but it goes a bit too far.

On the flip side, if Jimmy is truly never hungry, if he often only eats one 2000-ish calorie meal per day, if his wife really does have to remind him to eat sometimes ... How has he gained 20+ (more likely 30+ perhaps as much as 45 from the looks of things) pounds in the past year?

I can account f0r that. Eveyvnl left a balanced and insightful review under one of jimmy moors books and it was completely rubbished by "fat Head". I doubt he took the views seriously and just brushed them off. Once he starts to see how many of his guru's are churning out rubbish he may be ready to let go go his whole schtick. Doubt it though.

I forgot about that! This man has been a total asshole to and about me from the get go. He is totally ignorant about how the human body really works and loves spreading innuendo and bashing me to support his side. From early on when he declared me mentally unstable to comments in recent posts declaring that "some blogger" was insinuating some rift between him and Jimmy. LOL ... I know the bromance rages on and for whatever reason they are Uncle Jimmy and Christine to his kids. But remember I didn't photoshop the SS uniform on Jimmy. These last few minutes of the 2013 LC Cruise Roast are interesting.

The problem with Tom is that he's so arrogant and dismissive to counter opinions that he can't see the forrest through the tree's. It's probably his political views that are driving it all. I'm at least glad that his kids probably are no longer eating a low carb diet.

It's a shame it took a dozen blog posts by one of his friends (richard) to convince him that it's ok to eat a potato. He also said that Richard Wraningham's book "catching fire" was what also convinced him. That's a sad indictment of the nutrition knowledge of these characters.

OK I just saw the video link Evelyn posted with JM in the Nazi uniform. The least important takeaway for me is I can't tell JM's fat pictures from his skinny pictures. Is that just me? He's fat in all of them? Second Tom is pretty much on my S-List now. I know he doesn't care and that's fine. But that's from 2013 and he's not doing what JM tells him he ought to be doing food wise. so basically, whether he knows it or not, even HE thinks JM is FOS whether he admits it or not. Is being delusional contagious? Maybe through Frisbee contact or a Frisbee blow to the head.